Rolle, Glover Head Fine Cast In `Raisin In The Sun`

February 01, 1989|By Clifford Terry, Television critic.

As proved by the new, uncut three-hour production that kicks off the 8th season of ``American Playhouse`` (8 p.m., Wednesday, WTTW-Ch. 11), Lorraine Hansberry`s seminal, semi-autobiographical ``A Raisin in the Sun`` was much more than just the first play written by a black woman to reach Broadway audiences. Initially displayed in 1959, it is still a marvelous work that holds up, as they say, amazingly well.

In the role originated by Claudia McNeil, Esther Rolle of ``Good Times``

makes a dramatic change of pace as Lena Younger, the proud, cheerful South Side Chicago matriarch who dreams of owning her own home and scratching in her own garden.

For years, she has settled instead for a clean, but shabby rental apartment, and a raggedy plant on a windowsill. That all changes when she receives a $10,000 check from her late husband`s insurance company, part of which she uses as a down payment on a home in an all-white neighborhood.

Danny Glover co-stars as Walter Lee Younger, a bitter chauffeur whose own continuous dream is that ofentrepreneurship-this time out, as a partner with some pals in a liquor store. Kim Yancey appears as Beneatha, Walter Lee`s upwardly-mobile daughter, a feistily independent college student who plans to go on to medical school.

In presenting a determinately different portrait of a black family then had been depicted on stage and screen previously, Hansberry-half a dozen years before Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus-also foresaw the civil rights movement and the stirrings of black consciousness. But the power of her play stems primarily not from great ideas, but great characters.

Lena Younger, who comes from five generations of sharecroppers, longs to have a place to plant her own roots, but never loses sight of putting the collective above the self. Characterized by her relatives as the family`s own ``Mrs. Miniver,`` she is also the Mother Courage of the South Side, and Rolle responds with a touching and memorable performance.

Glover, in particular, provides a powerful complement, especially in the climactic scene in which he finally completes his journey to manhood.

The rest of the fine cast includes Starletta DuPois as Walter Lee`s long- suffering wife; Kimble Joyner as their 10-year-old son; Lou Ferguson as a Nigerian student who raises, sometimes comically, Beneatha`s awareness of her black heritage; Joseph C. Phillips as Beneatha`s rich, preppy, pretentious friend; and John Fielder as the head of a white homeowner`s association who speaks of ``brotherhood`` but instead offers a cash buyout.

``Nightingales`` (9 p.m., Wednesdays, NBC-Ch. 5), the new series shamelessly and misleadingly touted during the Super Bowl as some kind of soft-porn vehicle, is nothing more than still-another outing for a favorite prime-time staple: nurses.

Spinning off from a 1988 TV movie, ``Nightingales`` does benefit from the presence of the always-welcome Suzanne Pleshette as the director of student nurses. Other than that, the entire package is in dire need of some creative CPR.